Studio Audience – Series Three, Episode 17 with Rubens, Arrested Development and Venice

I tell you now that I never thought life could get more exciting than sitting around our little desks with microphones chewing the fat about the art and design world, but it totally just did! So sit back and enjoy this brief rundown of a truly lovely episode of Studio Audience where we chat about recent goings-on and do an ample amount of complaining that we weren’t invited to the Venice Biennale. Maybe next time. On we go!

Download this week’s episode via iTunes here or stream live off the web here.

Section Two

Jeremy Deller’s British pavilion

If, like me, your Instagram is clogged up by collared, Campari-drinking art types at Venice this week then this section is for you. Let our exploration into Jeremy Deller’s Pavilion, Ai Wei Wei’s dioramas and the growing excitement around the Palazzo Peckham fill you with enough info to make people believe you were actually there. Semi-convincing spray tan optional.

Palazzo Peckham

Ai Wei Wei: S.A.C.R.E.D

Further reading:

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Liv Siddall

Liv joined It’s Nice That as an intern in 2011 and is now one of our editors. She oversees itsnicethat.com and has a particular interest in illustration, photography and music videos. She is also a regular guest and sometime host on our Studio Audience podcast.

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Hot Chip are one of those bands that have always had a fantastic visual sensibility. Illustrator Wallzo has been at the helm of it, bringing us glorious Michael Craig Martin-esque block colours and shapes to decapitated statues. Now, the band is moving into the world of bespoke printing, with the artwork for new album Why Make Sense by Nick Relph using an algorithm that means each copy’s design will be unique.

Yener Torun is a 32 year-old architect who has turned Istanbul into the geographical equivalent of Aladdin’s cave of wonders. Tucked away among the beautiful Ottoman and Byzantine architecture and the blue Bosphorus are a wealth of impossibly bright buildings dominated by geometric patterns, rainbow hues and funny architectural idiosyncrasies. And through his Instagram account, Yener has been slowly but steadily documenting it all.

He may not grace the covers of magazines or the red carpet, but designer Simon Whybray is more famous than you think. When you’re lurking about on the internet and being entertained by seriously cool and interesting stuff – do you ever stop and think, who the hell made this? Well, occasionally, it’s Simon. Designer by day, Tumblr scroller by night, Simon spends most of his time tucked up in his bedroom overlooking Old Street on his laptop. Sound lazy? It isn’t. He’s busy creating products, GIFs, designs, logos, club nights, clothing, memes, typefaces, music…you name it. Being on the internet all day has fed Simon’s brain like a drip, and subsequently he’s now asked by big brands to come in and teach them what the hell is going on out there in the real – well, online – world.

It’s not often I get to write about my two great loves in a single article, but sometimes the stars align and I’m covering smoked fish and graphic design all in the space of 300 words. Today I feel blessed! This strange combination of subjects has come together thanks to Swedish agency Kurppa Hosk undertaking a wholesale rebrand for Falkenbergs Lax, a small, family-owned smoked salmon specialist. Charged with turning the small-scale brand into an international major player in the fish industry, Kurrppa Hosk renamed it Korshags, and have came up with a sleek new visual identity to accompany the new name.

While magazine redesigns often receive a great deal of attention, few are likely to be more scrutinised than the new-look New York Times Magazine which debuts on Sunday. The Times is the leading newspaper in the US and its magazine is read by nearly four million people every week. When listed, the changes design director Gail Bichler and her new art director Matt Willey have implemented sound exhaustive – redrawn fonts, a redrawn logo, a new approach to lay-outs, a new-look version of the online magazine. Add to this a raft of new features and editorial changes (such as a new weekly poem, a column that rotates between four critics and a dispatch from the frontline of internet culture) and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the new magazine will be unrecognisable.

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Exciting new student alert! Meet Pauline, currently working on her advanced degree in type design at École Estienne in Paris – how glamorous does that sound? It’s rare to find a student with as much consistently fantastic work on their site, and for a while I didn’t actually twig that Pauline was still studying. She’s designed typefaces, had a bash at letter pressing for her business cards, and made some publications that, if I’m honest, I’d actually buy. The way she represented a bunch of Stéphane Monnot short stories is well-designed without overshadowing the writing, and that publication about the concept of an ornament just looks fantastic. Remember this name: Pauline Le Pape, she’s got big things ahead of her.

How best to describe the enduring and ubiquitous influence of COS? The brand has become almost cult-like in its appeal since it was founded a mere eight years ago, creating designs which are somehow timeless and classic and simultaneously innovative.

“I’ve been thinking about this forever and want a woman’s touch”…"In shape, 29 y/o, six feet tall"…"I know it sounds crazy but it’s a fantasy of mine for a woman to"… These are the most SFW snippets we can publish from a rather nuts, very rude new project by Cartelle Interactive, the people that brought us the brilliant, trippy J Dilla Donuts tribute, Dilla Dimension.

In the two years since we first featured nomadic designer Gabriela Maskrey she’s taken on a lot of new projects and pushed her skills in all sorts of new directions. Originally she was all about editorial design – which it has to be said, she was great at – but she’s recently branched out into branding for Peruvian luxury food company La Pulperia. Her bold serif rendering of the company name coupled with historic imagery referencing Peru’s gastronomic culture combines to satisfying effect, and the addition of hand-drawn icons is a great touch too. All in all a great first foray away from the world of books and magazines.

When you hear the words “branded content” you probably don’t get that excited, right? Well, times are changing. No longer do brands want to settle for something that isn’t going to whet the imagination of an audience, and so they’re recruiting fantastic creatives and partnering with cool platforms to make it actually worth everyone’s time. With this in mind, check out this pretty breathtaking animation created by Google Play in collaboration with Creative Sunday.

When an insurance company challenges you to not skip through their latest ad on YouTube, your first reaction is likely to be “try me.” But you know what? They have actually pulled something pretty remarkable together for their latest advert. Well, I say remarkable, it’s pretty low-budget, but the idea behind it is great. Knowing that the majority of people wouldn’t watch an insurance ad on YouTube unless you were holding a gun to their head, they made their advert two seconds long. Then if like me you enjoy the first two seconds, you can stay for the whole thing. Best thing about this ad is how they didn’t even green screen the family, and you can see them wigging out and twitching as that dog goes all Beethoven on their dinner. Nice.

Discussing the “treacherous tide” of the “constantly surging ocean” of the web last year, we looked at the brilliant UK redesign of Wired, a project that wowed pretty much everyone. Now, the US Wired site has also upped its game in its first redesign since 2007, aiming to “create a clean and gratifying experience” through a clutter-free site. We had a chat with editor in chief Scott Dadich about designing a site for some very, very digital-savvy readers.

Toronto-based illustrator and cartoonist Jenn Liv is a whizz with colour. With sustained attention to detail, she illustrates often quite stereotypical moments but always with a twist. There’s a great battle between two knights on a cliff edge at sunset, just giving up; a romantic moment, flowers, a white dress, a gust of wind and the man just nonchalantly wandering off.

I think I might never have seen two illustrators as well paired as Faye Coral Johnson and Mike Redmond, the duo behind this charming new book Behind the Wild Heart. Faye’s work – sketchy, sweet and imperfect – seems to slot right in with Mike’s dynamic cartoony characters, and the two work together so often that it’s difficult to tell where one’s work ends and the other’s begins.

Often the most interesting branding work hinges on a simple twist, and such is the case in this work by Freytag Anderson for Fraher architects. The Scottish studio’s concept revolves around the neat idea of the “F” in the logo doubling up as an architectural floorpan.

“Las Vegas is the strip club capital of the world,” says Stefanie Moshammer, an Austrian photographer whose recent project led her to the underbelly of Nevada’s shimmering city. Stefanie began work on a series called Vegas and She, in which she documents strippers, nightclubs, and various bits and bobs that represent Las Vegas culture: bright pink limos, dust trails, palm trees, and diving boards into sapphire pools.

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Hattie Stewart never stops giggling. It’s infectious, she’s a hoot. Her current solo show at London’s KK Outlet is under way, with a whole bunch of her now notorious, collectible doodles on magazine covers and, more recently, leather jackets. A Kingston graduate, Hattie now works for the likes of Rookie, House of Holland, Pepsi, and whoever else wants a big old dose of colour and weird magic injected into their brand. Her working style is instantly recognisable, and you’d be right in thinking that the nature of her work ties in to what she wears day-to-day.

Last week an interesting Twitter debate sprang up after a comment by graphic designer Andy Pressman who admitted that on a recent series he worked on it wasn’t always possible to read the books before designing the covers. So we decided to speak to a few other book cover designers and find out where they stand on this apparently quite divisive design issue; as ever you can add your thoughts using the comment thread below…

Life can be pretty boring when you’re a teenager. Rather than turning to the gory allure of video games and SnapChat, 18-year-old Izumi Miyazaki decided to take matters into her own hands and make a series of selfies that make yours look absolutely rubbish. By utilising household items and foodstuffs as props, and sometimes going as far as building her own sets (see head in the clouds photos below) Izumi transports herself into far off lands, so far off that they’re on a different world entirely. Her fixed, deadpan stare throughout makes the project not just endearing but also worth much more than if she was just larking about. It’s art, man. FYI she also sells badges and other small merch items – get ’em while you can.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve eaten sans serif, I’ve made huge typographic swear words with an ex, I’ve wandered Dalston taking pictures of kebab shop exteriors and I’ve seen Bodoni predict my fortune. Hell, I’ve even tried typographic dating. Why? Because of Sarah Hyndman, the one woman tour-de-force behind the Type Tasting enterprise, which takes a fun approach to typography and how it affects us emotionally.

Brooklyn-based graphic designer Elana Schlenker is not only the creator of “occasional pamphlet of typographic smut” Gratuituous Type, she’s also a freelancer with a magnificent array of colourful projects on her (frankly quite beautiful) website, a very good speaker, an exhibitor at exhibitions in Edinburgh and at London’s own KK Outlet. And she’s won a bunch of awards, too. Her aesthetic is pastel coloured without being sickly, innovative without feeling audacious and involves the kinds of books which just seem to make life nicer.

Welcome, podders! Fantastic episode this week featuring me, Liv Siddall, and Billie Muraben and James Cartwright from the It’s Nice That team. After a great question submitted by Hattie Stewart we chewed the fat over the latest art and design news, including the new identity for the Royal Albert Hall and the much talked-about cover for The Gentlewoman. In section two we discuss London Fashion Week, the sartorial habits of creatives, our new Workwear feature and the effect social media has on the the world around fashion week. Any comments, complaints, compliments – just get in touch via Twitter, email, or the comments box below.

HELLO podlings. Boy has there been a lot of news in the world of art and design this week, ready to catch up? Join me, Liv Siddall, and my guests Rob Alderson and Karl Toomey to fill you in on all you need to know. In this episode we chat the new Skoda ad , The New Yorker’s90th birthday (happy birthday, we love you), the NME (maybe) going free, London Fashion Week and the very exciting nominations for 2015’s Designs of the Year.

Alright lads and lasses! The new-look podcast is back again with 24 minutes of art and design themed chinwagging for your delectation. We kick off with a predictably leftfield opening question from illustrator, artist and former It’s Nice That Graduate Edward Monaghan about the purpose of art and its future. Yeah we went there!

Welcome to a rather exciting brand new season of Studio Audience. We’ve got fun new visuals by the talented Guy Field, a somewhat catchy new jingle from illustrator, animator and music-maker Paul Layzell, and we’ve generally had a little bit of a “spruce.”

Do you reckon Ai Wei Wei might like a bouncy castle for Christmas? We do. There’s a whopping total of SIX people in this podcast including It’s Nice That Directors Alex Bec and Will Hudson, and boy is it hectic. In it we discuss the creative world in 2014, the year gone by and the one approaching us, and tales of Rob going to church when he was little. Sound good? It’s better. Merry Christmas from the whole It’s Nice That team, and we will see you on the other side for more Studio Audience!

Afternoon pod fans! We’re back for another week (got to admire our dedication if NOTHING else) and this week we’re talking about Band Aid 30 off the back of this excellent Bryony Gordon evisceration of the whole shebang before moving on to chat about our new digital publishing feature and why online pioneers don’t get the same attention as the so-called golden age of print. As ever listen using the SoundCloud embed below or subscribe via iTunes here.